The Diana Aitchison Fund Plants, People and Pitlochry Emmi Klarer
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The Diana Aitchison Fund This fund provides grants and bursaries to support young people who want to pursue a career in horticulture, and especially to further their knowledge of alpine and rock garden plants, and their cultivation. The fund was established thanks to a very generous sum of money made available from the estate of the late Diana Aitchison, a keen gardener and plantswoman who set up and ran her own nursery at Spindlestone, near Belford, Northumberland. The fund is managed by the Scottish Rock Garden Club. Details of how to apply for grants are on the club website. Among the reports that recipients have submitted over the years, the following one will be of particular interest to readers for its combination of practical, botanical and regional enthusiasms. Emmi Klarer was funded to work with Julia Corden at the Pitlochry Explorers Garden in 2012. Here is her diary … Plants, People and Pitlochry Emmi Klarer 5th June. For my first day in the Explorers Garden, one of the volunteers took me around and gave some history and other knowledge about the garden and Scotland in general. I learnt about the danger posed against the UK’s native Red Squirrels, which are abundant along with Grey Squirrels in my home state of Wisconsin. One of my tasks during my stay here will be to weed out Willow Herb, which also comes from America. There are several types that occur here, including one that is not invasive, but today I am focusing on Rose-bay Willow Herb. Rose-bay Willowherb, or Epilobium angustifolium, is a tall rhizomatous perennial with alternate lanceolate leaves with strong veins. The plant is dark green for the most part, with some hints of red and blue-green on the leaves. Flowers are a bright pink and clustered in a terminal raceme, with pink hued sepals. Petals are rounded and uneven in size. Flowering span is from June to September but we prefer to not let the plant get to the flowering stage in the garden. This willow herb, along with the other invasive species, often grows in clearings, footpaths, waste ground, and water banks – nearly anywhere it can. It is found in most of Europe, Asia and North America. 6th June. Being this time of year, I’m spending most of my first week learning all the weeds that are shooting up. This year seems to be particularly bad in terms of weed production, but that also means the other plants are doing well, too. It’s really quite amazing how just a few weeks ago none of these weeds could be seen. That’s not to say they didn’t exist - they were only underground. Today’s weed is Ragwort, or Senecio jacobaea. Technically it is a wild flower of the Asteraceae (daisy) 68 Emmi Klarer family native to northern Eurasia, but here it is a weed. Ragwort is a biennial plant with straight erect stems with little or no hair and pinnately lobed leaves. It has hermaphrodite flower heads that are in clusters with bright yellow florets, but we try not to let the plant reach its flowering stage between June and November. While ragwort provides shelter and food for Senecio jacobaea over 70 insect species, it also contains many alkaloids that make it poisonous to other animals. Most animals, like horses and sheep, do not eat ragwort when it is alive as it has a bitter taste but when dead and dried it loses its bitterness. This can be a problem when dried ragwort is in hay or grass that these animals eat because it is still poisonous, but sheep and goats have a reduced level of liver damage when compared to horses and pigs. 7th June. I have a fascination with plants that lack chlorophyll or have dark coloured leaves. Many cultivars of Japanese Maple (Acer palmatum) fall into this category. The Explorers Garden has at least one palmatum, but my photo was taken at Drummond Castle where there is an abundance of these deciduous trees. They are often small, even being called Acer palmatum at Drummond Castle shrubs, reaching around ten metres which makes the trees ideal understorey plants in woodland areas. The leaves are four to twelve centimetres wide and palmately lobed with five, seven, or nine pointed lobes. The flowers are collectively in small cymes, the individual flowers with five red-purple sepals and five white hued petals. The fruit is a pair of winged samaras, requiring stratification for germination. The root system is compact, non invasive, and prefers well drained soils that are not over fertilized. 8th June. Today I learned about a new weed that could easily be mistaken for an intentionally planted flower. The native perennial’s common name is Creeping Buttercup, or rather Ranunculus repens. In the Buttercup family, it has leafy, rooting runners that choke out surrounding Working at Explorers Garden 69 plants. Its distinctive feature is a stalked middle lobe on the basal leaves. The plant boasts small (about 3 cm) yellow flowers with five petals and hairy sepals that are out between May and August. It grows in a wide range of woodlands, meadows, farmland, footpaths, and wastelands which also contribute to its survival. This species of buttercup is distributed across Europe, Asia, and North Africa – nearly all over the globe. 11 th June. Continuing my weed education, today’s plant is what my Julia (Corden) calls Poppers. Poppers are what I found to be called Hairy Bittercress, or Cardamine hirsuta. This is an annual plant with erect stems branching at the base, with the potential of reaching thirty cm in height. Luckily it has a single taproot, which makes it easy to pull, but it still spreads like wildfire because of its fruit. The fruit is a siliqua (dehiscent) which pops open releasing far too many seeds to count that can spread as far as three metres from the parent. Leaves consist of two to four pairs of round leaflets arranged alternately along a central leaf stem. The small flowers, occurring in clusters on the terminal flowering stems with four petals and hairy petioles, make what can be a tiny but widespread plant barely visible. 12 th June. Lady’s Mantle, genus Alchemilla, is part of the Rose family. The main characteristics include palmately lobed, toothed, and hairy leaves that hold water droplets. Clusters of tiny, yellow-green or chartreuse flowers with green sepals and no petals appear in the late spring and summer, making this plant a subtle complement and good Alchemilla mollis under rhododendron ground cover for gardens. It is an herbaceous perennial with about 300 species within the genus, the majority being native to cool temperate and subarctic regions of Europe and Asia. A few species are native to the mountains of Africa, North America, and South America. Most are clump- forming or mounded with basal leaves coming up from woody rhizomes. 13 th June. Today I think it’s about time I feature the famous and beautiful Meconopsis ‘Lingholm’, our Himalayan Blue Poppy. The flower petals are a deep blue, unlike the mauve and purple shades seen in George Sherriff’s Meconopsis. The best Lingholms have four petals that overlap one another. The protruding ovary, style and stigma are surrounded by golden stamens. The fruit is an oblong-elliptical capsule that, at maturity, is about four cm long, covered in bristles, and full of plump seeds in appearance. While this poppy is a true perennial, 70 Emmi Klarer Lewisias at the Explorers Garden individual plants may be relatively short- lived (2-3 years) and others relatively long- lived. Julia tells customers to not let the plant flower the first year and to prune it, as the flowers the following year will be well worth the wait of looking at only large, Meconopsis ’Lingholm’ elliptical hairy leaves. 14 th June. Today was my first day of planting! First job was to clean off the dirt of the Lewisia plugs because they were to be planted in the sandy crevice gardens. This is essential so the plants would root in the sand and thrive. The plugs I planted were cotyledon hybrids but we sell both hybrids and ‘Little Plum’ at the kiosk and theatre. Lewsias are herbaceous perennials native to western North America. They form low, fleshy rosettes of deep green leaves, bearing relatively large flowers in the late spring and early summer and often repeat flowering in autumn. The ‘Little Plum’ variety has flowers that range in colour from cotton candy pink to deep salmon. Cotyledon hybrids have flowers of white, yellow, pink, salmon, rose, orange, red, and magenta. All lewisias grow best in rock garden settings with excellent drainage as the lower leaves rot easily when wet. Once established, lewisias can be drought tolerant and spread 20 cm. 15 th June. Some of my favourite plants in bloom at the moment are the aquilegias. Those in the garden are Aquilegia Songbirds (Aquilegia hybrida, family Ranunculaceae) that come in a wide range of colours from blues and purples to whites, yellows, and pinks – my favourite being the deep rose with inner yellow petals. The Aquilegia genus consists of about 60 to 70 species of perennials that are found in meadows, woodlands, and high altitudes in the northern hemisphere. The genus name derives from the Latin for eagle owing to the shape of the flower petals, which are said to resemble an eagle’s claw. This shape also gives them the common name Granny’s Bonnet. Flowers bloom in the spring and summer. Leaves are divided or lobed, but can also be heart shaped, arising from the base Working at Explorers Garden 71 of the plant and alternately up the stem.